Taller
by chi-of-ink
Summary: He had this hatred in his eyes, even when they were tangled up around each other and Zim was digging his sharp little fingers into Dib's back and saying 'more, more,' but he couldn't think anymore...ZADR, one-shot, MPREG


A/N: **This is a one-shot.** I don't want to make a big story and go through the whole mpreg experience. I wrote this for the culture-clash plot bunny. I find a lot of situations with Zim so interesting just because he's from a whole other planet, everything's new..I was surprised at how much mpreg there was in this fandom and then I was thinking about the differences of what a normal pregnant woman would stress over, and what an Irken would stress over, having none of that personal connection that humans have...haha.

Anyway, this is rated R for subject matter and topics blah blah blah, there's no blatant sex or anything graphic so don't freak. Enjoy then..

**x x x taller**

When Dib heard a hiss from upstairs, followed by a hard, tumbling thud, he jolted out of bed in an instant. Any little uncalled for sound or surprise was heart-stopping now. Now that Zim had become more...vulnerable.

He found the flustered alien sitting gracelessly amongst fallen kitchen gadgets and a sea of spilled flour. His skin was paled and blotched by the foggy white color, and his cerise eyes were narrowed and turned down with a furious sort of humiliation.

Dib managed to collect his panic before speaking. "What happened?"

Zim scoffed hatefully, unmoving. "What happened?" he repeated venomously. "Zim doesn't know. What happened, _Dib?_"

Dib sat down on the floor opposite him, ignoring the mess of flour and scattered surroundings. Zim ignored his studying eyes, instead regarding his own body was a familiar, revolted expression. His hands hovered for a moment over the swell of his abdomen, looking morbidly curious and decidedly spiteful.

"This is disgusting." he said at last, lifting dark eyes to Dib once more. "_You_ are disgusting."

Dib gave him a dubious look, though deep down, he was tempted to just agree.

He hadn't expected this. He should of thought of this...thought of _something_. Zim wasn't human. Irkens didn't have children. But, apparently, it wasn't impossible, because here they were, tense and uncomfortable, up in the middle of the night for no real reason except that Zim made even less sense now than he did before this all started...

He should have thought of this, somehow.

Zim let his hands drop, pressing against the flour-coated tiled floor to hold him up better. He turned his head away, a little color rising in his face as he avoided Dib's eyes. He was getting used to that, though - either Zim would look at him with some barely-pent up, tangled emotion, anger or hatred and other things among it (sometimes, he even saw fear,) but most of the time, Zim kept his eyes away, like he was trying to erase him by pretending he didn't exist.

Dib slumped a little, watching the confused Irken silently. The collar of his shirt was slipping again - the black against his thin, green shoulder was so blatantly..._misplaced_...he hadn't known what to expect when they found out. But it seemed the hybrid between them was human enough to keep at least some of traditional expectations in pregnancy...Zim certainly show as obvously as a human girl would be right now, but he was pregnant enough that he had to give up his neat little Invader uniform in lieu of something more loose-fitting.

The alien had been livid to discover this. Zim's Invader get-ups really weren't_ bad_ outfits - Dib had to admit the Irken material was really quite advanced to compare...but he had sifted through those clothes several times before he gave up and told Zim to wear something that wasn't so clingy. It just wasn't going to work.

There was a bit of a fight over it; Zim didn't want his help, Dib pointed out he'd feel more ridiculous in those little magenta stripes anyway...but really what it all boiled down to was his pride. Sure, Dib didn't know everything about Zim's race, but he could see where the pride led him...here he was now, stuck on Earth, in his rival's house, no less, carrying a child he couldn't bring himself to want and becoming practically useless because of it. And now, he didn't even have his native clothes anymore - just Dib's too-big T-shirts.

Zim shook his head sharply for a moment, his antennae flattened back behind him, reaching over absently to tug Dib's slipping hand-me-down shirt back up over his shoulder. He glanced down at the messy floor between them, looking as if he were contemplating getting up, then gave a irritated sigh, scooting back a little from Dib to glance around at the kitchen again. It was obvious Dib wasn't going to leave without being convinced the little Irken was alright, and it was getting harder and harder for Zim to threaten him away now that his body was becoming so..._inconvenient_ on it's own.

"Your worm-smeet seems to want the icky human food-things..." Zim explained at last. "And Zim knows better than to ask Gir to cook something. But this stupid kitchen is _useless..._! All your stupid little powdery..._poisons_..."

"There's stuff..." He gestured toward the fridge without looking. "...you could have asked me, Zim..."

Only that was a stupid thing to say, because Zim didn't like asking for help. And if he did ask for things, it was always orders - unnecessary orders and rants. It was obvious there was something bigger bothering him at the moment. Zim lost patience so easily, the evidence of that was in the toppled-over kitchen things, but more so, it was his stationary position that was worrying. He looked...deflated. Exposed.

Zim never gave up, though. And he wasn't pushing away, which was just enough encouragement for Dib to keep pressing...

"Did something else happen? Or - are you feeling sick? Did it...?"

"It's nothing, _Dib-beast. _Stop with the whiny noises!"

Weeks ago he would have let that go. But now it just made him even more determined - if Zim was refusing to talk, it was Dib's responsibility to make sure he figured out what was wrong. For the baby's sake. He couldn't let Zim's stubbornness result in complications that could have been avoided. And besides, this was...worrying.

"Zim - "

"I said I don't want to _tell_ you, Dib-beast! Idiot creature...Zim said NO!"

Dib crawled closer to him, closing the distance between them. Zim gave a short, angry glance around behind him, but otherwise didn't bother moving again. There wasn't much further to go, and it wasn't so easy to jump to his feet now. He face burned hatefully as he met the human's eyes.

Dib was exhausted. He had been for a long time, but this was so difficult, the combination of this news of a baby...and Zim. Zim made everything exhausting, it was just that simple. He wished he could just let this go, detach himself, give up when Zim gave up and end the story now. But the alien had hooked him in, somehow.

He didn't even understand this: while he was still here, why his life was still all about the little Irken, even after the armada had abandoned him. They both chose to stay here, for whatever reason, maybe even only just because there was no where else to go. Life was a drug with him, a constant battle, and Dib just wanted to strangle him and revive him and do it again, watch his eyes, taste all the little noises he made. Zim made such noises, he was so perfect that it made him insatiable, drove him insane.

The Irken looked at him with a darkness, a burning hatred, even when they were tangled up around each other and Zim was digging his sharp little fingers into Dib's back and pulling him closer and deeper until he couldn't think anymore, even when his whole body was cold and hot at the same time with the shock of the baby, and he held Dib so close he felt his bones would snap under his grip.

He didn't know why they were sitting in the same room with flour spilled all around them, under burning kitchen lights that made everything look like plastic, under the dull electric hum and an oncoming headache and Zim wearing his shirt with the visible swell beneath it, the swell that was his fault, because he obsessed over Zim, he held on to the obsession, he let this happen when he saw Zim looking up at his taller form and getting weak, he let this happen when he stopped thinking and carried the alien over to his bed and let himself get drunk on the hisses and pants and that submissive look he had never seen on Zim's face before. It had felt so good, so good to have Zim underneath him like that, he hadn't thought about anything else.

That face was turned away from him now, paled and miserable, antennae laying limp. The shirt was slipping off his shoulder again, exposing more pale green skin. Dib reached forward and pulled the fabric back up for him.

"Zim." he tried again, with as much patience as he could muster. The alien made a little noise of distaste.

"...I was wondering if the worm-smeet thing...I was wondering if it would be tall."

Dib blinked, a little surprised by that. Then again, he supposed it wasn't such a silly thing to stress about. On Zim's planet, that was a big deal. Still...

"...Zim, you're on Earth now, remember? You know that doesn't matter here-"

"ARRGH..!" He cried with frustration, glaring at Dib with his shoulders hunched again, like an angry cat, "I _KNOW_ that, Dib-thing! That was why I wasn't going to SAY this to you! But you _had _to know, you with your pushy needy wordy things! Leave Zim alone for once!"

Dib straightened, taken aback as Zim continued to glower, his mouth pressed in a tight little line. For a moment they just watched each other, until Dib finally sighed and rubbed a hand against his temple tiredly.

"Yeah...alright, Zim-"

"Ugh - that tone you use." Zim made a face, lifting his chin a little, and watched him with a frown. "...I despise you." he hissed at last. "I despise you and your...you...you make me sick, Dib-beast."

Dib regarded him dubiously. Somehow, he knew that wasn't all the truth. Of course it wasn't. For either of them, really. If that was all, they wouldn't be here right now. They would have never co-existed, even in this dysfunctional way.

Zim's eyes narrowed.

"And I hate looking up at you, too. You idiotic thing! And you humans, growing so fast, like _weeds...._I don't like looking up at you and wanting...!" he made a short, frustrated hand gesture. "Wanting your stupid status-y feelings. I knew you when we stood eye-to-eye, then you are suddenly taller and you look at ZIM...! Like you _want_ him...!" He sneered, turning his face away again. "I despise you!"

Dib stared, his chest feeling suddenly tighter...Zim submitted by instinct?

"You didn't...want...?"

Zim was silent for a long moment, a darker color rising to his face. The corner of his mouth twitched as he glared at the floor beside him. "I...we do not do such icky mating things on my planet. A taller commands respect, that's all." he gave him a dark glance. "This thing you humans do does not result, ever."

Dib shook the words off, moving a little closer. "But...us, Zim. You didn't want to do...that?"

After a short breath, the Irken turned to meet his eyes. They were heavy, and full of something different Dib couldn't read.

"If Zim wanted you gone, you would be gone." he made a little motion with his fingers, as if he were thinking to shoo him away. "Your mating ritual thingy....this is exclusive, yes?"

Dib wanted to laugh at the familiar drawl. He relaxed a little. "Uh, yeah. I'm not cheating on you, I mean..."

"Hm." He shifted, bracing his hands a little better against the powdery floor. "...yes, then. Zim will keep you."

Dib shrugged with a little smile, relieved that wasn't a problem to add to the list. "Well." he gave another glance at Zim's middle. "Good. And you know...I don't care if it's tall or not. The baby, I mean."

Zim scoffed and muttered something that sounded like 'you humans are so simple...'

Dib got carefully to his feet. "I'm going to clean up the flour...Gir will throw this all around if we just leave it out."

Zim shrugged and allowed Dib to help him back to his feet. He held the counter for a moment, looking down at himself with a frown, then tugged a little aimlessly at the hem of the oversized shirt.

"This is shameful." he mumbled. "The great Zim, of the great Irken empire...stuck here on Earth, with your worm-smeet thing growing in..." he tugged the shirt again, moodily.

"It's your baby too, Zim." Dib reminded him as he started to clean off the counter surface.

"Eh." he looked fleetingly at Dib, the corners of his mouth tugging down again..."It is disgusting. All of this." He gritted his teeth shortly. "I don't know why I want to keep you, really..." he poked one sharp finger at Dib's chest. "You better be worth this."

Dib didn't say anything. In reality, Zim was always surprising him now. The things he said sometimes caught him off-guard. But he knew to be careful with being weak.

He looked back over his shoulder at the Irken, who was sitting at the opposite table with his hands folded up under his chin. As he finished wiping the counter tops clean and turned to find a mop for the floor, he paused to sneak another look...Zim's antennae were curled back behind him still, though not nearly so limp and miserable as before. One of his bare, three-fingered hands rested cautiously at his stomach, then dropped back at his side as he held a tentative look.

"I think it will be tall." Zim said decidedly to him at last. "Any child of mine must be superior."

They hated each other, it was always true. They were infatuated, and obsessed, and Dib...Dib had always hated him. He doubted they would ever really have the right kind of normal relationship, but still....he felt like smiling Zim's words...it was so typical.

It was insanity, living with him, a drug, and a constant battle. But he liked it like this, the burning, the weight. Wanting to tangle them up, wanting to tie Zim down and sink his fingertips into every inch of him, wearing them out, the pushing and pulling, how it felt to trap the thin wrists and press up against him and be obsessed...

Besides...he let this happen. Dib had done a lot in his life, and he had pulled through worse. Maybe it was against better judgment...but Zim was his now, and Dib was keeping him.


End file.
